Tuesday, January 10, 2012

[Atomic Robo] Action. Science. Dice.

Woke up this morning to about 20 Twitter notifications in my inbox. "Ah. Fred must've announced Atomic Robo."

So: some backstory on this extremely awesome project about which I have been bursting with excitement on a daily basis for several weeks.

Back in November, Robo writer Brian Clevinger contacted me about turning his and artist Scott Wegener's creation into an RPG. Seems he'd just gotten The Kerberos Club (FATE Edition) and thought it'd be a good fit. Now, I should mention that at that point, embarrassing as it is to admit, I wasn't actually familiar with Atomic Robo, despite having a fairly varied pull list at my FLCS. (This is chiefly because Morgan Ellis, who's been a fan of the book from the beginning, never once bothered to mention it over the past few years I've known him. Seriously, what is up with that?)

Fortunately, Brian sent me a PDF of Vol. 6 #1. My reply: "How can I be involved in this? You had me by page 2."

In the midst of talking about what form that involvement might take and what kind of sandwiches it'd pay --sandwich negotiations are a key part of being an RPG freelancer -- Fred Hicks and Evil Hat got involved, and the Atomic Robo RPG went from being a really cool consulting gig to "OMG am I actually going to be designing a FATE game for Evil Hat?"

Apparently... yes!

If you've read this blog for a while -- or even just read the name of it -- you know I'm a big fan of Evil Hat. Spirit of the Century was a revelation for me. Playing and reading it not only changed the way I thought about RPGs, but also led pretty directly to my first freelance work on Legends of Anglerre. And now I get to design a game for Evil Hat that's a combination of Buckaroo Banzai, Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, and Planetary.

There'll be more to talk about later, but I can at least say this right off the bat: It's not going to use Strange FATE. Instead, it's going to use the in-development Fate Core rules to accomplish some of Strange FATE's design goals in terms of custom-built skills. The goal is to make ARRPG a true pick-up-and-play RPG, in which on-the-fly character creation is the default.

5 comments:

This is terrific news! It seems I must apologize to you as well as Colin and others for not evangelizing Atomic Robo. In my defense when I first found out about it, I was so overwhelmed with how awesome it was I just assumed that everyone else I knew would simply discover it as well. The only reason I can think of for the lack of that discovery amongst all my friends is that they aren't as awesome as they need to be.

I also noticed that a certain lack of any sort of Deinonychosauria in your previous Dinosaur post. Now I no longer have to wonder about that, as now I know that you're saving those stats for Dr. Dinosuar!

Congratulations! I had not heard about Atomic Robo, but will defintely be checking it out and am looking forward to the new game. I've been a huge fan of this site and your work for some time. Glad to see your design skills leading to bigger and better things.

Phase I: Background

Mike Olson is a freelance RPG writer, designer, and editor. His credits include -- in chronological order! -- Legends of Anglerre (Cubicle 7), The Kerberos Club (Fate Edition) (Arc Dream), Fate Core System (Evil Hat), Fate Accelerated Edition (Evil Hat), and Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game (Evil Hat). When he's not doing that, he's a full-time dad and husband, although his wife gives him more vacation days than his two boys do.

Looking for Guy Bowring's sweet Fate take on Greyhawk, the classic AD&D setting? He has his own blog now! Check out spiritofgreyhawk.blogspot.com.